I know I haven’t posted in a long time. I have, honestly, felt so overwhelmed by everything that is going on I sort of cocooned. I was hoping to emerge as a butterfly but, alas, me and the world are still crawling around in the dirt wishing we could fly. It took the teabaggers to wake me from my slumber. It took Glen Beck and Fox news to get me moving again. So here we are 3 months into Obama’s first term and man I got to tell you that whole euphoric sense of hope feels so far away. It can’t possibly have only been 5 months since I stood on a street corner in Durham in November and felt like the world had changed. The more that comes out about this financial crises and what a few hundred people were able to do to wreck our economy the more I feel angry. The teabaggers are angry to of course. The problem is they don’t know who, or what, should be blamed. What’s really happening with these rallies is they are being usurped for political gain by the right.  If you simply look at some of the signs people have at these rallies you understand that they are being used to push the right wing agenda on everything from taxes to gay marriage. Most of these people at these rallies are being used by the Republican party to generate media attention. The Republicans were scared shitless when they lost to a black guy with a Kenyan father preaching hope and change. How the fuck could they lose to that guy. This is America after all. We keep those who are not white, male and over the age of 55 on the edges of power not right in the middle of it.

Most of the people at these rallies can do nothing more than spew back what they have heard from Glen Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly et al. Very few of them have actually read any in-depth analysis of this crises and it’s true roots nor do they realize the hypocrisy of blaming the Democrat in office without blaming the Republican who just left. God forbid they look in the mirror. I would lay even money that a few of the people at these rallies lost their homes. Now I don’t mean to be unsympathetic here but many people who lost their homes were victims of their own greed. They bought houses they couldn’t afford with no money down and an interest only loan payment and when it blew up they needed someone to blame.What’s really infuriating is that these people sat silent while the Bush administration ran up huge deficit numbers and purposely left the cost of the war out of every single budget the sent to The Hill. Why are they just now deciding to get angry. I’ll tell you partof the reason; they lost and continue to lose. They lost the election to a black guy with a foreign sounding name, they lost their keys to the halls of power, they are losing the battle against gay marriage. They are being marginalized. They are becoming the minority and they are scared to death.

This brings me to the realreason that last November feels so far away. I will admit, right here and now, that I fell for the bait. I believed it really could be different. I believed we really could change the way it worked in America. It hasn’t happened though, has it? Instead of both parties coming together to get us out of this mess we have even more partisan divides than ever. I am not crazy about Geitners bank bailout but the budget the Republicansrolled out was a joke. All the right seems to be able to do is scream louder than everyone else in order to be the loudest thing on your TV. It is depressing to find ourselves knee deep in one of this countries worst financial crises and hear nothing but partisan bickering from the folks who just lost the election. Sore losers every single one of them.

It all makes me want to curl up in my cocoon again. At least for awhile I can pretend I still have a 401k that is worth anything. I can pretend my house is still appreciating and that my son won’t be paying exorbitantly high taxes for the rest of his life. Maybe this time me and the world can really emerge changed in some significant way. I doubt it though and it’s that doubt that makes me sadder than anything else.